The subject matter herein relates generally to battery connector systems.
Battery modules, such as those for electric vehicles or hybrid vehicles, typically includes a plurality of cells grouped together to form the battery modules. The battery modules are connected together to form battery packs. Each of the cells includes positive and negative cell terminals that are electrically connected together. The positive and negative cell terminals are connected using bus bars. Some systems are designed to monitor aspects of the battery cells, such as voltage, temperature and the like. Such systems provide sensors that are connected to a monitoring circuit. However, providing wires between each of the cells or bus bars and the monitoring unit adds bulk to the battery modules.
Some systems use flexible flat cables to reduce the thickness of the wires connecting to the bus bars, which are easy to assembly and avoid chafing wires. However, termination of such flexible flat cables may be difficult as the flat wires of the flexible flat cables need to be routed to different areas of the battery modules. The flat wires are copper conductors having a rectangular cross section. Additionally, even at a central connector where the flexible flat cable is connected to the monitoring system, each of the flat wire needs to be terminated to a different terminal and loaded into a connector. Some conventional systems use pierce crimp terminals that pierce through the flexible flat cable to electrically connect to the flat wires. However, pierce crimp terminals may provide less reliable electrical connections as compared to conventional crimps. Additionally, loading such terminals into a common housing is difficult. Moreover, such assemblies may not meet high voltage creepage distance requirements set by some industries, such as the automotive industry, as separation distances between the terminals may not be great enough. Separation of the flat wires to form individual flat wires to separate the terminals and thus increase the creepage distance is difficult when using regular flexible flat cables. For example, cutting or tearing of the flexible flat cable may result in exposing portions of the flat wires, which could lead to short circuiting or other problems.
A need remains for battery modules that use low cost, flexible flat cables for termination of the flat wires to terminals.